St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1887-12-10
THE VERSATILE MAN.


THE VERSATILE MAN. ,..
a Myriad Minded lnalivialual KsoWn An
Over the Land.
Swift T. TOtum was the most versa.
tile man ever saw. Talk Of myriad
minded Shakespeare! Why. Shakes
peare wasn't patch 10 Totuuh Totum
had more minds in half day than
Shakespeare couM boast Of during his
mortal career. lie would swing around
through the entire realm Of the arts.
sciences and humanities as readily and
as swiftly as the New England wealth
ercock will describa the horizons cir.
Gle. and he would 90 around the former
quite rs often rs the New England
weathercOck makes its circuit in search
Of the wind that blows
Swift I. TOtum was. in fact. WON
derful mana wonderfully wonderful
man. not TO make it too stronS-and ]
have wondered what the world would
have done without him. Totum
wasn't one Of your machine men. who
spend their existence in one con.
tinuous. monOtOnous movement; not a
bit of it, He was a grand and COM.
prehensive machine shop. laboratory.
atelicr. studio and study rolled into
one. There was nothing which he
hadn't been intO-and out of-and the
only cloud upon Totum's lifs was the
comparatively small number Of ave.
nues which the world of matter and
the world of thought opened up TO his
superabounding versatility.
Meet Totum early in the morning
and you found him filed to overflow
ing with. say, q scheme to amelioratc
the condition Of pastry cooks; an hour
later he was deep in tho Investigation
Of some reconditc theory Of his own
relative to the ancient sun. myth; at
MONDAY he was immersed in some
grand business enterprise; the after
noon was given to The elaboration Of
some alleged discovery in ply sizes; the
political regeneration Of the world oc-
cupicd his evening hours. and he re-
tired dreaming of an inchoato patent
process which was 10 rcvOlutiOnize the
custom Of wearing stockings inside
ones bcots instead of outside. =.
And then there was nothing small or
sccrctivc about Totum. Whatever he
did. or rather whatever he began to do.
he invariably took the world into his
confidence. He wasn't the man to
shut himself up in secret when he had
ono Of his vast enterprises on foot. He
loved company; the more Oft he had.
the better; and he would kindly talk
over his impending scheme for hours,
or rs long as any one would listen TO
him. and then-why. by that time his
prolific mind hal given birth to, somo
new idea which completely over
shadowcd and dwarfcd its predecessor.
grand as that hal seemed when viewed
by itself
Toium never started out to sharpen
. lead pencil or draw the cork ont of
an ink bottle bus he had At least half a
dozen wondering spectators and.
though it usually ended in somebody
else sharpening tho pencil and
in somebody else drawing the cork.
that fact did not initiate against his
greatness. 1t only showed that mind
like his. tecming with redundancy Of
ideas was so trammeled by .imc and
occasion that it was impos. ible for
him to put any OF them into concrete
form.
For like reason Totum never sue
ceeded in learning a foreign language.
ancient or modern. though he had
made many essays in both directions;
and his havning in literature was OF the
fiimsiest dcscription.-while his infor-
nation upon the practical affairs #
life was exceedingly tenuous. His
mind was constructed upon SO grand
scale. and he attempted 80 much and
SO many thipgA that he could not pin
himself down long enough to one sub
ject to master it; he could not inn
prove one opportunity without losing
hundre of other opportunities.
II Totum could have divided his cor
poreal substance into thousand dis
tinct individualities. he would easily
have furnished them all from his own
brain with vocations and avocations
suffi icient to last them alt to the crack
Of doom. It was really too bad in Provi.
dcncc to endow Totum with SD versatile
a mind without providing an adequacy
of physical functions and snfliciency
Of time to accompany it. Had his
body been at all commensurate with
his mind. and his life been extended
over centuries instead of through
paltry threcscore and ten at the out
side. this world would one day be Z
very different world than We now
find ii. ~-
But. alas! Totum's carrying powers
were no match TO his creative. a He
died without accomplishing any thing.
He had all through his life 'bittcn ID
more than he could chaw." He was
chewing cver-he absorbed nothing.
But TOtum was most excellent
chewer. Boston Transcript
Househo,d Helps. =
A VOOd wav tn take An ink stain out